


Take a Deep Breath

by BearlyWriting



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [5]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Bad Things Happen Bingo, Blood and Injury, Cricothyrotomy, Eye Trauma, Facial Trauma, Gen, Gore, Hurt/Comfort, Major Character Injury, Not that much comfort though, Now with added comfort and, Panic Attacks, Prompt: Self-surgery, Scars, Shiro (Voltron) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Tracheotomy, Vomiting, body image issues, eye loss, self-surgery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-08
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2019-11-13 20:43:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18038687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BearlyWriting/pseuds/BearlyWriting
Summary: "Shiro wakes to pain. It’s a huge dark mass, pressing behind his eyes, in his nose, his mouth, his throat, forcing his skull apart. He’s scared to move. If he lifts his head his skull will splinter to pieces. He’s terrified that he’ll find shards of it beneath his hands."For the prompt: "Self-surgery" for the Bad Things Happen Bingo.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Quick disclaimer: I did a tiny bit of research for this but I am not a medical professional so I wouldn't rely on this fic if you ever do have to perform an emergency tracheotomy!

“Pidge!”

Shiro throws Black forward without thinking. Takes the blast that was meant for Pidge head-on. The blow sends the Black Lion reeling, and Shiro with her. It jolts him from his seat. Rag dolls him into the dark, empty space of the cockpit. Smashes him against the console. There’s a crack like a gunshot, reverberating through Shiro’s whole body, rattling his bones. A vast spider web of pain splinters across his face, his head, his throat. He sprawls across the console, stunned. Thinks his jaw might have shattered. Been ground to tiny little fragments speckled beneath his skin. He chokes.

Black Lion spins. Shiro is thrown back against the seat. Electricity sparks up his spine, flashes strange lights behind his eyes. He can’t catch himself. All of the energy seems to have drained out of his body, leaving his limbs floppy tubes of meat, flailing about like one of those inflatable men forever waving their arm outside of car dealerships and hover bike repair shops.

Shiro needs to pull himself together. Needs to drag himself upright and wrestle the Black Lion back under control. He can hear the other Paladins shouting, calling his name as if from very far away, sounding small and watery. But he’s dizzy with the spinning and the pain and he can’t _think_.

The planet looms, a dark circle punched into space, rising rapidly to meet him. Shiro has to shut his eyes against the sight. Has to swallow hard against the bile - and what might be blood - surging up his throat. He can feel Black at the back of his head, blanketed beneath Shiro’s pain, her own alarm, electrical impulses sparking like nerves. They aren’t going to pull out of this.

There’s a rushing in Shiro’s ears, as if he can hear all that space whipping past them. It drowns out the panicked sounds of the other Paladins on the comms. It drowns out his own ragged breathing and the rapid beeping of Black’s alarms. It doesn’t drown out the earth-shattering sound of the collision.

 

***

 

Shiro wakes to pain. It’s a huge dark mass, pressing behind his eyes, in his nose, his mouth, his throat, forcing his skull apart. He’s scared to move. If he lifts his head his skull will splinter to pieces. He’s terrified that he’ll find shards of it beneath his hands.

It takes a second to realise where he is - on the unforgiving floor of the Black Lion’s cockpit - for the world to jigsaw back into place inside his ruined brain. Something is very, _very_ wrong. Shiro can’t breathe, and not just because of the pain, which is crawling like a living thing through his chest.

His chest? It could be broken ribs. A punctured lung. He tries to force a breath and manages a single, strained wheeze.

Not his chest, although there’a a steady, burning ache in his side. It's his throat. It’s sealed, a steel trap snapped shut against his struggling lungs. It’s been crushed. His whole face has. It’s been caved in. Hollowed out. His nose is shattered, throbbing, clogged with blood. His jaw feels as though it’s been torn from his face and put back wrong. The pain is exquisite. Excruciating.

“-ro? Shiro?”

“Is he dead? Oh God, is he dead?”

The voices seem to come from all around him, from the air itself. It’s difficult to make sense of them. They can’t quite filter through the sheet of pain. 

Then, another voice, clearer and louder than any of the others.

“Shiro, can you look at me?”

Shiro risks turning his head. It’s loose on his neck, like it might just roll away, and pain shivers through his entire body at the movement. But the voice had told him to look at it, so he tries.

He blinks. The world is thin and grey, as if he is straining to see it through a shroud pulled over his face. One half of his vision is a dark hole. _It’s blood_ , he thinks, _just blood in your eyes_. And is surprised that he’s capable of any coherent thought at all. The space where his eye may - or may not - be is just a pulpy knot of pain.

Shiro blinks again. The Black Lion’s screen is up. It’s cracked, flickering. There are shapes moving in it, Shiro thinks, blurry grey ghosts, piling up against the glass.

He tries another breath. A trickle of air manages to slip through the mess of his throat. 

“Oh Dios Mio, look at his face!”

Another voice, strained and spitting. “Shut up Lance!”

“Why does he sound like that? Is he breathing?”

Shiro isn’t breathing. At least, he’s not breathing well. The voices spin around him, dizzying, nauseating. Another surge of bile tries to fight its way up his throat. It burns through the tiny gap left. But Shiro can’t figure out how to work his mouth open. Doesn’t think he can. Something trickles out of his nose, blood or bile - Shiro can’t tell.

“Shiro.”

It takes an extreme effort to focus his single good eye on Coran’s face. What Shiro can see of the Altean is pale and grim, a blurry mirage wavering through the darkness of the Black Lion’s cockpit. His moustache twitches when he talks. There are three of them, growing down his neck.

“I need you to breathe for me,” Coran says, perfectly calm. Only, Shiro can’t. He struggles. Squeaks. But doesn’t quite manage another snatch of air.

Reflexively, he drags his prosthetic fingers against the ruin of his throat. Claws at the tender flesh. He can’t breathe. He can’t _breathe_. The sensation is a cold stone dropped into his stomach.

Distantly, Shiro is aware that Coran is speaking to him. But panic and pain shutter his vision, stopper his ears, drag him into darkness as effectively as snuffing out the light.

“Shiro,” Coran snaps and his urgent tone finally filters through. “Try to stay calm. You need to open up your throat.” Every nerve in Shiro’s body is firing. “Do you have a blade?”

Thinking is like wading through treacle, slow and stuttering. Normally Shiro doesn’t carry a knife. He doesn’t need one, not with his arm, but there is one strapped beneath the chair. Shiro had put it there. Just incase.

It shouldn’t be hard to reach: Shiro is crushed against the chair, half-curled around it. His flesh arm is a numb, dead thing. But his prosthetic still mostly obeys his commands. It’s easy enough to slide it beneath the chair, harder to find the knife. There isn’t a lot of sensation in his Galra hand and it slides across the surface without any grip. 

When his fingers finally close around the handle of the blade, and slide it free, Shiro is dizzy with the effort, lungs cramped for want of oxygen.

“Good,” Coran tells him. “Very good Shiro.”

Shiro startles; he had forgotten Coran was here. Now that he’s paying attention, he can hear other voices too. They’re still in the midst of the battle, Shiro realises, with a cold clench of his gut. The sound of distant blaster fire rumbles through him. Sets goosebumps pricking across his skin. This isn’t right - he should be up there with them, helping them. He knows their concern for him is a distraction.

“What do you mean open up his throat?” Hunk? Sounding much closer than Shiro would expect. Sounding scared.

“Coran…”

“Can’t you just go and get him?” That’s Lance. He sounds scared as well, his voice high and tight, grating against Shiro’s ears, rubbing against raw skin.

There’s a crashing sound, so loud that it seems to shake the ground around Shiro, then Pidge’s voice: “Woah! Lance look out.”

Their voices seem to soak through his skin, into his aching bones, a swelling wave of noise that drowns out any of the meaning within them. He’s drowning in it. Drowning in the blood in his throat and the void in his lungs.

“Shiro.” Coran’s voice is strained. There’s a loud, deep rumble and Coran’s image flickers and wavers and almost dies. “I’m not going to reach you in time, so you need to listen very carefully.”

Shiro tries. It’s difficult, the lack of oxygen makes him slow, makes his head spin. He blinks. Settles his gaze on the cracked-glass image of Coran. The Altean nods, tilts his chin up, baring the long column of his throat. A gloved finger slides over Coran’s Adam’s apple and comes to rest in the small dip beneath the bump.

“Shiro.” Coran’s voice is calm but Shiro can sense the undercurrent of urgency. Feels it like a feather on his skin. “You need to make a small incision just below your Adam’s apple, between the two bumps. You can feel it with your fingers.”

Shiro’s prosthetic is still gripping the blade. He doesn’t want to let go of it, so he has to peel his other arm off of the floor. It throbs. Burns. When he shifts it, a nauseating pulse of pain spears up through his shoulder and into his brain. But the panic of not being able to breathe is already huge and dark in there, taking up too much space for the pain in his arm to really catch hold.

His fingers, when he trails them over his caved-in throat, are trembling. Blood slicks his fingertips. But he finds the little dent beneath the distorted crush of his Adam’s apple, bent all out of shape, and rests his fingers lightly against it.

“Good,” Coran says. Is he getting further away? Shiro doesn’t want him to leave. Wants to call him back, but he can’t speak. “That’s good. Now make a small incision: a half-inch wide and a half-inch deep should do it.”

The chance of Shiro getting the measurements right are slim - he isn’t even sure if he’s got the right position on his throat. Both of his hands are shaking, so badly that he can barely grip the knife. But he can feel himself slipping, feel the dark void of unconsciousness dragging at him, pulling at his eyelids and his burning chest. If that happens, he’ll die. Coran had said it himself - they won’t get to him fast enough.

So Shiro lifts the blade and presses it to his throat, at the point where his fingers rest. Then, before he can think better of it - or stop thinking at all - he pushes in.

It hurts. But compared to the rest of his body it’s nothing, a tiny prick of pain. The knife sinks through his skin like butter and blood gushes up through the wound, spills over his fingers, hot and slick. He wants to gag but can’t.

There’s a terrible sound. A frightened, strangled noise. It hasn’t come from him.

Shiro immediately goes tense. The sound had come from one of the Paladins: they’re scared, maybe hurt, and Shiro is too injured to help. His whole body aches, throbbing too painfully to even contemplate moving, and there’s a knife at his throat. Someone is pressing it so hard against him that it’s punctured his skin. He’s hurt, and they’re scared, and there’s nothing he can do to help them.

Something wet trickles across the mess of his face. It might be blood. It might be tears. Shiro can’t tell. He only notices the sensation through everything else because it drips, hot and wet, into the shell of his ear. His hands tremble and the knife pressed into his neck trembles with them, the sharp edge of the blade opening the wound in his throat - wide and gaping.

Then: a trickle of air. Shiro’s ribs heave, struggling to drag in the precious oxygen they’ve been starved of. Some of the fog in Shiro’s head recedes and suddenly he can think a little clearer.

“What is he doing?” 

“Shiro!”

“He’s hurting himself!”

Blood runs down the back of his throat, soaks his shaking hands. It settles in his stomach, so heavily that Shiro has to clench around an awful wave of nausea.

“Shiro, you need to take the knife out of your throat before you hurt yourself further.”

Oh. The hands pressing the blade into his neck are his own. There’s a strange disconnect between his body and his brain, he can’t seem to control them, can’t stop the shivers, can’t pull them away from the vulnerable stretch of his neck. More air slips through the widening gap, gurgles in the wet mess of his throat and his cramping lungs. He can’t stop shaking.

“Shiro!” Keith’s voice, filtering through the veil of pain, sounding small and far away. “Let go of the knife.”

Slowly, painfully, Shiro manages to force the fingers of his prosthetic hand into submission. Manages to peel them, one-by-one from the handle of the knife. It slides free, the flat of the blade slipping across his neck as it clatters to the ground. Shiro’s arm falls with it - too weak, too limp, to hold upright any longer. It thumps against the floor with a solid clunk of metal-on-metal.

Shiro tries a sigh. Feels the wound in his neck flutter grotesquely as air tries to force its way into his throat. More blood slides across his skin.

“Good Shiro.” Coran’s voice this time. There’s not enough energy left in Shiro’s body to expend on turning his head, so he just lies still and lets the words wash over his skin. “You need to hold the wound open, Shiro, to let the oxygen in.”

That sounds...difficult. It sounds like more than Shiro can manage. There isn’t much sensation in his prosthetic, nothing real anyway, but it tingles at the thought of having to lift it again. Shiro doesn’t want to.

Luckily, the fingers of his other hand still rest against his throat: right by the wound. He shifts them and they slide easily through the blood. Apply a little pressure and Shiro can feel his throat move, hear the wet slide of flesh against flesh, like the smack of damp lips, as the wound gapes.

Air rushes in through the gap, so quickly that Shiro almost chokes. It’s awful. It’s amazing. Shiro gulps in oxygen until he’s dizzy with it. There’s a fire in his chest. Acid in his throat. His face throbs in agony. But those things seem small and insignificant beside the simple fact that Shiro can breathe.

If he could, he would sob. Instead only a strangled, gurgling sound comes out.

“Shiro? Is he OK? Is he going to be OK?” Pidge is crying, Shiro realises, distantly. Someone else is too, half-stifled sobs, wet and small sounding. Lance maybe? Or Hunk? It could be both. It’s difficult to filter through all of the sounds swirling in the air around him.

“He’s fine,” Coran says, voice too bright. “Isn’t that right number one?” Then, without waiting for a reply - not that Shiro can give one - “You just hold tight and wait for us to come and get you. Shan’t be long now.”

There isn’t much else that Shiro can do. The thought is sour in his ruined mouth. He’s too injured, too helpless. All he can do is lie on the cold floor of the Black Lion’s cockpit, holding open the wound in his throat. Blood is drying sticky on his skin. It tugs at the lid of his good eye, tangles in his lashes, webbing them together. It’s an effort to keep it open, so he lets his eye slide shut.

The purple glow of Black’s cockpit burns against his lid. The metal floor is cold against his back. The distant sounds of battle press in against his ears. He trembles with the effort of keeping his airway open. He can feel himself slipping, feel the darkness folding itself over the edges of his mind, feel something more insidious clawing its way into his brain. The smell of blood and the purple haze and the pain are trying to drag him into a flashback but he can’t let it - if he loses his grip his throat will close, he won’t be able to breathe. Who knows how long it will take the others to get to him.

“I think I have an opening-“

“Keith!”

Shiro jolts at the urgency in the voice, suddenly loud and close in his ear. He must have lost a little time - his fingers are slack against his throat, little sips of air fluttering through the small gap left. He presses down again, feels his lungs fill, chest rising with each breath.

There’s a dull thud. Not blaster fire this time, and too close, too real to be from the battle going on above his head. Black seems to shift around him. He can feel her in the back of his head - her fear, her concern. Something that would be pain if the Lion could feel it. Then her mouth slides open and someone is scrambling up the metal ramp towards him.

Every muscle that still responds to Shiro’s commands goes tense. Someone is coming for him. He’s weak. He’s injured. He isn’t going to be able to stop them from killing him.

The footsteps stop. Hands hover over his face, he can feel them in the air above him, hesitating to touch him.

“Shiro?”

Relief floods through him. He goes slack with it, sagging against the ground beneath him, fingers loose on his throat. It’s Keith. It’s only Keith.

His eye flickers open at the sound of his friend’s voice, peeling apart beneath the blood trying to stick his lids together. Keith’s face swims above him, grey and watery and creased with fear. His eyes flicker over Shiro’s face. There’s something horrified in the twist of his mouth, the wet gleam of his eyes, the way his throat works, as if he’s swallowing against a gag.

“Oh God, Shiro.”

There are words trying to fight their way up Shiro’s throat. Trying to soothe, to reassure. Only, they can’t get past his crushed neck, his ruined jaw. He can only gurgle in response. Blood and bile and spit bubbling out of the hole in his throat.

Keith’s face contracts in horror. One of his hands comes to rest gently on the top of Shiro’s head, fingers light against his hair. The other presses against Shiro’s throat, forcing open the wound beneath Shiro’s slack hand.

“It’s OK,” Keith murmurs. Shiro thinks there might be tears on his face. The fingers on his neck tremble - he isn’t sure if it’s his own, or if it’s Keith’s that are shaking. “It’s going to be OK Shiro.”

Shiro would agree, if he could - just to reassure him. But he can’t get the words out.


	2. Chapter 2

Shiro wakes up choking. 

There’s cool air against his skin. A rush of noise, like a breeze whipping past. Shiro opens his mouth to it and, for a moment, is surprised that he can. He can’t remember why he should be. He can’t remember where he is.

“Shiro!” 

More than one pair of hands catch him as he falls. Strong arms wrap around him before he can land on his knees. For a wild, breathless moment, Shiro fights, unsure of where he is or who’s touching him. Afraid that the arms are going to constrict and cut off the air he just regained. Voices swirl around him but it’s difficult to make sense of them. He can’t breathe and he’s hurt and he needs to hold his throat open otherwise he’s going to die, only his non-prosthetic arm is trapped against his side by the broad plane of somebody’s chest, and he needs his Galra hand to make his captors _back off_.

“Shiro!” 

No, that isn’t right. There’s no wound in his throat now. Air pumps in and out of his lungs as he pants a little desperately, and the arms around him aren’t tightening, aren’t crushing his ribs. They’re holding him up. And that’s Keith’s voice in his ear – Keith had been there… 

Shiro blinks. Blinks again. Keith is here, leaning down towards him, face chalk-white beneath his mop of black hair. When Shiro drags his eyes over to him, his expression tightens, then abruptly smooths into a tentative smile. 

“Hey Shiro, you back with us?” Then, when Shiro offers him a shaky nod: “How are you feeling?”

How is he feeling? Shiro takes stock of himself. He feels…as good as he ever does. Now that he’s no longer panicking, his ribs rise and fall smoothly. There’s no squeaky whistle as he struggles to drag in air, no choking pressure against his throat. Shiro tries a smile. There’s a strange, tight sensation, not unlike the way the scar on his nose tugs at his skin whenever he makes an expression that shifts it, but all of the muscles obey his command at least. He flexes his jaw next and marvels at the fact that it stretches without pain. That his bones are no longer shattered fragments in his face. 

“Good,” he manages, and marvels again at the strength of his voice, rising unimpeded through his throat. “I’m good.” Keith’s smile widens, but the tightness doesn’t leave his eyes. 

It had been bad – Shiro recognises that, in a distant sort of way. He knows how easily he could have lost the opportunity to stand here, in the med bay, totally healed. How easily he could have lost the opportunity to see the other paladins again. A shudder ripples through him. Feeling suddenly vulnerable in a way he _definitely_ doesn’t like, Shiro tries to straighten. This time the arms around him do tighten – hard enough to force a huff of breath from Shiro, before they shift and a shoulder presses up under his arm instead. Hunk. It had been Hunk’s arms around him as he thrashed through his confusion, holding him up. There’s another little shudder, then, as Shiro realises how easily he could have hurt him - how much damage an errant flail of his arm could have caused. 

“I’m fine Shiro,” Hunk murmurs, as if he can read his thoughts, cutting off the apology that Shiro was just about to voice. “You didn’t hurt me.” 

But Shiro still grimaces, shifting away from Hunk’s touch. Hunk lets him go easily enough. “I could have.” It’s not a pleasant thought, but he can’t let himself get away with lapses like that and he can’t let the paladins get complacent either. All it would take is one good hit and then… Shiro can’t even finish the thought, stomach churning queasily. 

When he turns to look at Hunk, that queasiness only intensifies. There’s a strange, distorted quality to the world, as if it’s stretching out of shape, as if everything is reeling past him too fast and yet, at the same time, much slower than it should be. For a long, frightening moment, the world goes dark, like a thin shroud has been pulled over his vision. Shiro blinks rapidly, but a dark smudge remains. The left side of his world obscured by a black hole. There’s no pain, but Shiro can feel the echo of it, the sharp, pulsing agony - just another bright spot in the mess of his caved in face. It had barely even registered then, but suddenly it’s all he can focus on. Vaguely, he’s aware of his breath hitching. Of someone’s hand light on his arm. His prosthetic lifts, moving almost independently of his mind, but someone catches his wrist, holding it still half-way to his face. Part of him wants to snap at them – to keep them safe from the danger – another part of him, small and vicious and usually buried, wants to light it up – to burn the hand circled loosely around his wrist, to stop them from _touching_ him. 

“Careful, Number One.” Coran’s voice filters through to him as if from very far away, and that’s vaguely familiar too: the Altean’s voice pulling him back into his body, whilst his mind tries hard to float away. “Don’t touch it.” 

“What…?” The horrible, frightened rasp of his voice pulls him up short. But he can’t help asking: “My eye?” 

Coran’s face is soft, creased with pity and something that has anxiety writhing through Shiro’s gut. Behind him, Lance looks even worse. The pained expression is ugly on his usually cheerful face. 

“I’m sorry, Shiro.” And Shiro’s heart drops. His left hand, free from the loose grip of Coran’s fist, continues the prosthetic’s journey. Trembling fingers brush over the dark hole in his face. A ropy knot of scar tissue greets him, rough and strange beneath his fingers. As alien as the metal arm grafted to his shoulder, the unnatural flash of white in his bangs. The tremble shivers up his arm until his whole body is crawling beneath his bodysuit. 

“The healing pods – they’re not perfect. They can’t replace something that’s already lost. Any more than it could replace your arm.” Coran tightens his grip on the prosthetic, as if to prove his point. With the dulled sensation, Shiro can barely feel it, but he jerks his arm anyway, suddenly uncomfortable with the restraint. The Altean lets him go. Watches him tuck the prosthetic close to his chest with dark eyes. 

“It’s gone then?” He finally asks, and doesn’t know how he manages to force it past the lump in his throat. It might as well be crushed again for all that he can breathe through it. Shiro already knows, he already knows that it is, but the small nod Coran offers him is devastating all the same. He isn’t sure what noise squeezes itself out of him, but it draws the others towards him like a magnet, crowding too close. 

A small arm snakes around his waist, then Pidge’s head is pressing against his stomach. “We can make you a new one,” she whispers, voice small and muffled against him. Because of course she does. “A robot one.” Shiro thinks she might be crying.

The sick, anxious feeling that’s been curling through Shiro’s gut flares into sudden life. They’re all too close. Pidge’s arm is tight as a vice.

Shiro turns as far away from them as he can manage and vomits all over the floor.

 

***

 

It’s not fair. Shiro allows himself the thought, alone in the bathroom, forcing himself to stare into his own eyes in the mirror. Or, he should say, eye in the mirror. Usually Shiro avoids looking at himself, if he can. There are no mirrors in his own bedroom, and bathroom trips are completed with long ago engrained military efficiency. He isn’t vain - never really cared about his appearance before, or now, even. But there’s something endlessly disconcerting about looking in the mirror and seeing someone you hardly recognise.

If he had thought the scar and the hair was bad, it’s nothing compared to the way he looks now.

The most obvious is the eye - or the lack of it. It’s a twisted knot of flesh and not-flesh, dark and unnatural in his face. Shiro can barely stand to look at it, and yet his gaze is drawn unerringly back to it whenever he tries to drag it away.

There are more scars too. A spiderweb of little white cracks across his jaw. Jagged marks branching away from the older, thicker scar on his nose. A thin, pink line across his throat that sends a little shiver of unease over his skin when he brushes fingers against it. Another time, he might have been more bothered by them. Now they’re utterly eclipsed.

He is glad though, that he couldn’t see himself when those wounds were fresh. He can’t imagine the mangled, bloody mess he must have been. Some of those scars must have been caused by bone, jutting through his skin, or gaping, open wounds. He _can_ remember the pain - the pure, all encompassing agony and, as always, there’s a strange disconnect there. It’s difficult to reconcile the two experiences when his skin, though not smooth, is whole again, whilst the wound feels as though it happened only minutes ago.

He’ll have to talk to the others at some point. They shouldn’t have been subjected to that, and he can only imagine how they feel about it. But he can’t face them right now. Not yet. He needs another few moments to fall apart.

The stranger in the mirror stares back, unblinking, as Shiro unravels. One sunken grey eye flickering over him as he shakes and sweats and grips the sink so tightly that he’s afraid it’s going to crack beneath the pressure of his Galra hand. The missing eye is all he can see, a caved-out hole in his face. Shiro can imagine it sinking right through his flesh and out the other side. Imagines being able to see the back of the bathroom straight through his skull.

It’s not fair. The Galra have already taken so much from him. _It’s not fair._

There’s a crack like a gunshot and Shiro falls, barely avoids smashing his face against the shattered remains of the sink as he drops to his knees. Or maybe he doesn’t, because the sound reverberates uncomfortably through his head, spikes of remembered pain lancing through his jaw, his nose, his throat, his _eye_. Maybe he tore all his wounds open again. Maybe Keith never arrived and he’s still lying on the hard metal of Black’s cockpit, gurgling out his last strained breaths.

Shiro fumbles at his neck. No blood. No fleshy wound slick with spit and bile. He presses at his jaw next and is relieved to find it firm beneath the pressure. Then, tentatively, he runs his fingers over the bridge of his nose. The thick skin of his scar is rough beneath them, but it’s still intact. It’s not just another hole in his face.

He can’t bring himself to touch any higher.

He tucks his arms around himself instead, and his hand finds the join between prosthetic and flesh. _It’s just one more thing,_ he tells himself, _just one more thing that’s different._ And if his fingers dig in hard enough to hurt, that’s only because the skin there is so sensitive.

He’s dealt with this before. He’s dealt with the Galra hurting and changing and making him something he isn’t. He’s dealt with the pain and the taunts and the fact that no matter what he does he can never get what he lost back. And if it means he can never be a pilot again-

Shiro chokes, his grip on his arm going so tight that little sparks of colour burst across his vision.

He’ll never be a pilot again. Not with one eye.

_We can make you a new one. A robot one._ Maybe…

As soon as he thinks it his stomach turns. There’s a flash of purple. Remembered agony pulsing up his arm, worse than even his throbbing face. It won’t be like that. It won’t. Because it’ll be Pidge and Hunk and Coran - not Haggar, not the Galra.

Still. 

He tries to imagine it - a cybernetic eye - but all he can picture is Sendak’s unnatural orange glare. His arm throbs. _We’re connected, you and I._

No.

Shiro manages to get to the toilet before he vomits this time. There’s nothing left to bring up and his stomach clenches painfully around nothing as he spits bile and acid into the bowl.

“Shiro?”

He heaves again, gasping against the pain. There are tears on his face, damp against his cheeks, dripping over his chin. The acidic taste of bile in his mouth is too familiar.

“Shiro, we’re coming in.”

No. _No, no, no._ He doesn’t want anyone to see him like this, slumped over the toilet, sweaty and shivering, face a mess of tears and spit and bile. He’s supposed to be the leader. He’s the Black Paladin for God’s sake. Or, he was. Who knows what he is now?

“Oh, Shiro.” There’s a gentle hand on his back and Shiro shudders beneath the touch. More hands shift him upright and he sags against Allura’s shoulder as Coran holds him steady. “It’s OK, it’s OK, Shiro.”

It’s not OK. Shiro can’t stop the tears. Can’t stop the awful, ragged sobs bursting out of his throat. Allura slides her arms around him and he buries his face in the soft cloud of her hair and cries and tries desperately to breathe through his tears.

Eventually, Shiro cries himself out. He slumps bonelessly against Allura, too embarrassed to look up and meet her gaze. A hand strokes over his face, carefully avoiding the space where his eye should be and Shiro doesn’t even have the energy to flinch away from it.

Part of him cringes at this awful display of weakness. Another part of him, small and sick and tired, acknowledges that it doesn’t even matter - it doesn’t matter that he just fell apart in front of Allura and Coran, doesn’t matter that he just proved how weak he is in front of the only people who could strip the Black Paladin away from him - because he’s never going to be the Black Paladin again anyway. It’s a bitter thought, but then, Shiro has plenty to be bitter about. He allows himself that.

“That’s right Number One, get it all out.” Another hand on his back. Shiro doesn’t shake that one off either. “Everything feels better after a good cry.”

Shiro doesn’t actually feel much better, but he doesn’t argue. Just lets Allura stroke his face and run her fingers through his hair. Let’s Coran rub comforting circles between his shoulder blades. They sit in silence until Shiro’s shuddering breaths finally come under control and he starts to feel human again.

“The others-“ Allura starts and Shiro goes tense all over. It had been bad enough that Allura and Coran has seen him fall apart. The Paladins, they don’t need to see that - he doesn’t _want_ them to see that.

“Don’t-“ A hitching breath. “Don’t let them see-“

“Not to worry Number One,” Coran interjects, before Shiro can choke out the rest of his sentence. “They’re not expecting to see you.”

That should be a relief, but something hot and guilty squirms in his stomach as Allura pushes his bangs out of his face with surprising tenderness and Shiro turns into her shoulder to avoid the sudden weight of her gaze. “They’d like to though. They love you, Shiro. They’re worried about you.”

Shiro takes a deep, shuddering breath. She’s right, he knows she’s right. The other Paladins deserve for him to face them. But he doesn’t _want_ to.

“I’m sorry Princess.” He straightens up. Wipes a hand carefully over his face to get rid of the worst of the mess. “You’re right, I should talk to them.”

There’s hesitation in the brush of Allura’s hand. “You should,” she agrees, carefully. “But you don’t have to.”

Only, he does.

 

***

 

They’re in the rec room when he finally gathers the courage to go and find them. Pidge and Lance and Hunk huddled together on one of the low couches, Keith leaning against the wall opposite, arms crossed, mouth pressed into a thin line.

As soon as he steps into the room, they turn to him, their eyes zeroing straight towards him like he has a gravitational pull. Pidge jolts off of the couch, then hovers, wringing her hands.

“Shiro! I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean-“

“It’s OK,” Shiro cuts her off before she can finish the thought. He definitely doesn’t want to hear her apologies - doesn’t deserve them. “Listen, we should talk. I need to - I need to say I’m so-“

“Don’t.” The venom in Keith’s voice surprises Shiro and he stutters into silence. “Don’t you dare say you’re sorry. Not for this.”

Keith pushes off the wall and stalks towards him. His face is pale, his mouth a dark slash across his chin. Shiro flinches away before he can stop himself, his hand shooting up to cover the horrible wound in his face. The feel of it under his palm makes his stomach turn. But he doesn’t let go, too self-conscious beneath the other Paladins’ stares.

Keith stops abruptly. There’s a horrible, sick expression on his face. Tension tightens the air between them. Then Keith unwinds something from between his hands and holds it out, offering it to Shiro with a humourless smile. It’s his bandana - the one he had worn when he had rescued Shiro from the Garrison.

“Thank you,” Shiro whispers, throat inordinately tight, taking it with his free hand. He has to turn away so the others won’t see the scar as he winds it over his head. It does make him feel a little better when he turns back around to face them, although the tense, sad expressions on their faces make his stomach clench. “I won’t apologise. But we should talk.”

Keith doesn’t say anything in return, but he nods. The others do too, although they look unhappy about it.

“It must have been difficult for you to see that,” Shiro starts, ignoring Lance’s spluttered, “Difficult for us?” bulldozing through it as quickly as possible. “I don’t want to...patronise you. But if you need to...talk about it. I’m here.” And Shiro’s used to taking an almost paternal role with the Paladins - ever since a young Keith, alone and scared and hurting, had caught his eye at the Garrison - but there’s something distinctly uncomfortable about asking them to open up about something so...personally traumatic. 

“You -“ Unsurprisingly, it’s Lance who speaks up first. “We thought you were dead.” And his voice breaks on the word - a horrible, wet, hitching breath. Shiro can’t help wincing. “And your - your _face_. When we found out you were...conscious…” He cuts off with a choking sound.

Shiro fights the urge to close his eye. Hunk picks up from where Lance trailed off, his voice soft and pained. “It was awful. God, Shiro, it must have hurt.”

There’s no good answer to that - not a true one anyway. “I don’t remember much of it,” Shiro lies. And he’s studiously avoiding looking at any of them, but Keith is standing close enough that he can’t avoid seeing the way he tenses, clearly calling Shiro’s bluff.

“Shiro.” He can’t tell who the complaint comes from. There’s an odd rushing in his ears. The sound of his own pulse throbs through his head. Someone touches his arm, more than one someone, Shiro thinks through the fog. Strong arms slide around him and _no_. He can’t do this again. He can’t fall apart on them again. It had been bad enough the first time, when he had nearly hurt them, it had been bad enough with Allura and Coran.

At least his face is dry this time. Any tears he might have shed have already been purged. And it’s not bad, exactly, to have their arms around him. To feel Pidge’s head against his chest, Hunk’s own chest warm against his back.

“Be OK, Shiro,” someone whispers. “Please, be OK.”

And he will be. He has to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not that good at comfort so this was probably angstier than people were hoping for. Hopefully you enjoyed it anyway! :)

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed :)
> 
> I have a tumblr at [bearly-writing](https://bearly-writing.tumblr.com/) if you fancy dropping by for a chat, or to request a Bad Things Happen Bingo prompt!


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